Hello community, long time user (10yrs+) first time poster. One of the biggest problems I have with looking up help is that I don’t know the name of the different things on the interface. A lot of the manual is just text and it also begins assuming a great deal of knowledge by the user.
I’ve already tried googling it to no avail, so does anybody know of any picture that shows what the different things are called? My knowledge gets as far as “Mixer” and “Track”, no idea what the vertical line is called, what the rectangles with the sound-waves are called, etc.
If you’ve been using Cubase for 10+ years you must be doing something right! [Also, you’re listed as having 360+ posts?]
There’s a section in the Cubase Pro 10.5 manual titled “Parts and Events.”
I find the manual incredibly helpful. As are these forums. As are books. As are magazines. As are videos. I also find it helpful sometimes to back-track to beginner’s references. Seems there’s always something new to learn or something forgotten.
The manual does have pictures showing items on a given screen. At well over 1,000 pages, it can admittedly be daunting. But searching, reading, and absorbing it over time are critical skills.
This probably sounds slightly crazy but I love reading the cubase manual. I’ve dipped in and out over the years and I always come away feeling more empowered when I’ve discovered something new and useful. Sounds crazy but i get a warm feeling inside ha
Hi Kelp, thank you for your reply! I’ve mostly been using Cubase for mixing and mastering. Rarely, if ever, have I used it for recording or making music. I’m a heavy Dorico user (which uses the same forum), hence why it appears I have so many posts.
Recently I started a sample library company so I find myself using Cubase quite differently and suddenly I realise I barley know how to use it or what the millions of tools do.
Is that a link to a particular page? Because otherwise it’s just opening the same manual I already have… Thank you anyway!
Ah! Now it’s working for some reason, thanks a million! That’s exactly what I needed… If you don’t mind: what is the difference between Part and Event? Is the event the rectangle with the waveform?
An audio event is what you see in the project window. A part is a container for audio events (if you wish to group events together such that “act as one” on the timeline). I personally never use parts.
[I’m also a Dorico user, although quite casually!]
Fabulous! Now when you say “group events” is that when for example I use the “Glue” tool to join the rectangles/Events? For example, I’m trying to chop samples by using the Detect Silence tool and I can’t understand why I can sometimes do it in the main Project window, but on other occasions I have to do it in the Editor below…
For MIDI, Events are things like Note or Controller data, e.g. a keyboard controller generates Events. But when you look at MIDI in the Project Window those are MIDI Parts not Events. When you open one in the Key Editor that is showing you MIDI Events.
However the things you see in the Project Window for Audio are usually Audio Events and not Parts. So it can initially be confusing because in the Project Window you have both Events and Parts that kinda look similar - except one is MIDI & the other Audio.
An Audio Part lets you group Audio Events and the spaces between them on a single Track in a ‘container’.
But there is another way to group items by selecting the items & using Edit>Group. This doesn’t create a container you can move around like a Part. Rather all the items will stay in the same relative position with each other when moved. I’ve been using “items” because you can Group together Audio Events, Audio Parts and MIDI Parts all on different Tracks.
I find it useful to every so often to skim through a section of the manual. Typically I find things I might have ignored before that now seem quite useful (same thing with looking at Preferences). But for me the PDF version is much more useful than the on-line version even though they have the same content. The PDF is easier to navigate and visually scan.